Too much has been made of origins. All origins are arbitrary. This is not to say that they are not also nurturing, but they are essentially coercive and indifferent. Country, nation, these concepts are of course deeply indebted to origins, family, tradition, home. Nation-states are configurations of origins exclusionary power structures which have legitimacy based solely on conquest and acquisition. Here at home, in Canada, we are all implicated in this sense of origins. It is a manufactured origin nevertheless playing to our need for home, however tyrannical. This country, in the main a country of immigrants, is always redefining origins, jockeying and smarming for degrees of belonging. Erasing aspects of complicated origins by shedding accents, shedding dress, shedding tastes, shedding tyrannies taking on other aspects of other complicated origins no matter the new tyrannies. Entry into nation and therefore home pervades the public discourse.

— A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand (Page 64 - 65)